The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah, a contemporary American author, has written copious amounts of literature. By 2015, the year The Nightingale was written, she had produced twenty-one novels and several short stories and was on the New York Times best sellers list. I had read one of her novels before choosing this one for our book club, and enjoyed it very much, although I had read it many years prior and had actually forgotten most of the plot and all of the characters. What I did remember was that I liked her style of writing. For me, if I cannot empathize with and connect with the main characters of a book, it is of little worth to me. I have to feel that I could be that person or that I have known him or her. I need to believe that the protagonist is a real person with hopes and dreams and shortcomings with which I can identify. If I cannot do this, regardless of the plot’s strength, I am lost. Well rounded characters are real breathing people for me, not just made up figments of an author’s imagination, nor of mine. For this reason, although not only for this reason, I selected The Nightingale as our choice to read for this month’s book club.
At the beginning of this novel, World War II is raging and the Nazis are just about to invade mainland France. The year is 1939, and the village in which most of the story takes place is a little country hamlet Carriveau. Vianne Mauriac is a young wife and mother who finds herself in the unenviable position of bidding goodbye to her husband Antoine when he is called up to serve in the French Army to fight against Germany. Until this time, Vianne has erroneously hoped that there would be no invasion of her country, but, as we all know, an invasion did occur and Vianne and her young daughter Sophie are soon forced to share their beautiful yet rustic cottage with a young German captain who requisitions her home as a residence while he is stationed in town.
Now, here is where the story could have fallen into the pattern of so many novels. Vianne could have protested valiantly yet finally succumbed to the romantic and erotic advances of the handsome and principles young enemy captain, setting the stage for denial, then angst and eventually submission, with all of the requisite sighs, tears, and passionate protestations. Thankfully, Hannah is a better writer than this and does not fall into this trap.
Is Vianne attracted to this man? Yes. Does she act upon her thoughts? No. Is she cold and starving and beaten by the ravages of war? Is Captain Wolfgang Beck scared and conflicted and trying to carry out unjust orders in an unforgiving regime? Is Vianne desperate to secure food and heat for herself and her young daughter Sophie? Does Captain Beck hold Vianne’s fate in the palm of his hand? Absolutely, yet both she and he know full well the effects that bad choices might have on their tenuous truce and they purposely never act upon their desires. Attracted as they may be to one another physically, both are in love with their respective spouses, his back in Germany, hers at war on the Front. Both are terrified, lonely, and worn down, but because they are both decent people, they keep their own desires in check.
Vianne and her younger sister Isabelle lost their mother to illness not long before this war began, and until recently, Isabelle had been living with Vianne. When their father returned from World War I, he was a broken man, ravaged by the sights and experiences he had endured, powerless to express his love for his wife or two daughters. Because of this, both girls had been sent to live elsewhere when their mother succumbed to illness, and Vianne, only a young child herself, had been forced to be mother to not only herself but to her baby sister Isabelle as well due to their father’s inability to parent either. Isabelle had been placed in countless boarding schools in France in an attempt to bring stability to the troubled teen, but from each new facility she has been tossed as a result of her wild behavior and inability to reform. When bombs drop from the skies over Paris and much of France and caravans of trucks bring enemy soldiers closer and closer to their home, eighteen-year-old Isabelle struggles to find a purpose for her life. She yearns for her father’s love and direction, yet finds none. She hopes that her sister Vianne can love her as a mother should, yet Vianne is not her mother and has little time or patience for Isabelle’s antics or to address her failings or desires. When Isabelle finds herself estranged from both her father and older sister, she reaches out for love elsewhere, meeting Gaeten, a young Resistance operator who believes passionately that he and his countrymen can fight the Nazis from within France. Finally, Isabelle believes that she has found her raison d’etre, and she seeks her purpose through this endeavor.
While Isabelle remains a Resistance leader for the duration of the war, her operations are necessarily kept quiet. No one, other than a select few other Resistance fighters, can know of her occupation nor of her duplicity. Because of this, both Isabelle’s father and sister believe that Isabelle is lost to them, as they are all lost to one another. The father is unable to show his love to his daughters because of the stress he still experiences from his tour of duty in WWI and the loss of his wife when he returned. Vianne and her sister Isabelle are estranged from their father and from one another. Vianne tries to keep her daughter Sophie and herself alive during the hardships of famine and terror and to simply “go along to get along”, but when she loses her teaching job due to her association with her best friend who is Jewish, she quietly becomes a Resistor herself, secretly stowing away young Jewish children in an abbey nearby to keep them safe from the concentration camps. In fact, she adopts her friend’s son when the woman is taken away by the Gestapo one morning and raises him as her own child. Both sisters, and eventually we learn their father also, live duplicitous lives for many years in an attempt to save their children, their country and their belief in freedom.
Certainly, these characters are fictitious. Vianne and Isabelle and their father never lived, but their stories do. In 1940, The Nazis swept into Paris. At first, those living in the French countryside convinced themselves that the Nazis would be satisfied with occupying the capital, but they soon realized as bombings and caravans of trucks and trains began to arrive in their own towns and villages carrying in them German soldiers and later Gestapo forces that this was not to be. Germany was determined to occupy all of France, but the French government had fallen with little protest and begrudging acceptance of Nazi rule. France appeared doomed to become a part of the Third Reich and there was little that ordinary people could do to combat this reality.
But, of course, we know that this is untrue. It turns out that humans will put up with a lot to just stay alive. We will put up with hunger and threats and being cold. We will put up with enemy soldiers quartering in our own homes. We will put up with fear and constant worry and ration cards and bombings and sorrow and intimidation and death.
Shock and disbelief are the emotions most of those living in occupied France experienced in the first few weeks and months after the invasion. As time wore on, they began to respond to DeGaulle’s and British attempts to urge them to resist the occupation. Some resisted openly and loudly in the streets, but it soon became apparent that this method of resistance most often resulted in beatings, removal to a concentration camp, or even death. Within months, French Resistance had begun. Farmers, Catholic priests and nuns, business owners, teachers, shopkeepers, and students formed a loosely knit yet closely bound underground system of fighting the Germans while sustaining their personas of obliging residents under the new Vichy government put in place by the Nazis. Notes were passed, birth certificates and identity papers forged, Jews were hidden, and parachutists from Allied Forces shot down by German planes were housed and given safe passage to neutral countries. All of this was accomplished in an era when there was disrupted mail service, almost constant bombings, few phone lines, no cell phones and no Internet. The risk was real and, if caught engaging in any subversive activities, the punishment was swift and certain. Torture, confinement in a concentration camp, and, more often than not, death by starvation or rifle shot could be expected. For women the dangers were even more terrifying, as rape and removal of one’s children was a common response from the Nazis.
In 2020, this wartime saga seems so removed from our daily life. While Americans suffered unbearable consequences from our involvement in WWII and subsequent conflicts, never have we known the occupation by enemy forces over a sustained time. Except for the British invasion (and I do not mean that by the Beatles in 1964) prior to the Revolutionary War more than three hundred years ago and the bombing at Pearl Harbor, our soil has remained safe from foreign invasion. There have been threats and even attempts to topple our government, but, so far, we have prevailed. Despite our many political, social, and racial and ethnic differences, we have managed to remain one country under one government with borders intact.
Kristin Hannah, a contemporary American author, has written copious amounts of literature. By 2015, the year The Nightingale was written, she had produced twenty-one novels and several short stories and was on the New York Times best sellers list. I had read one of her novels before choosing this one for our book club, and enjoyed it very much, although I had read it many years prior and had actually forgotten most of the plot and all of the characters. What I did remember was that I liked her style of writing. For me, if I cannot empathize with and connect with the main characters of a book, it is of little worth to me. I have to feel that I could be that person or that I have known him or her. I need to believe that the protagonist is a real person with hopes and dreams and shortcomings with which I can identify. If I cannot do this, regardless of the plot’s strength, I am lost. Well rounded characters are real breathing people for me, not just made up figments of an author’s imagination, nor of mine. For this reason, although not only for this reason, I selected The Nightingale as our choice to read for this month’s book club.
At the beginning of this novel, World War II is raging and the Nazis are just about to invade mainland France. The year is 1939, and the village in which most of the story takes place is a little country hamlet Carriveau. Vianne Mauriac is a young wife and mother who finds herself in the unenviable position of bidding goodbye to her husband Antoine when he is called up to serve in the French Army to fight against Germany. Until this time, Vianne has erroneously hoped that there would be no invasion of her country, but, as we all know, an invasion did occur and Vianne and her young daughter Sophie are soon forced to share their beautiful yet rustic cottage with a young German captain who requisitions her home as a residence while he is stationed in town.
Now, here is where the story could have fallen into the pattern of so many novels. Vianne could have protested valiantly yet finally succumbed to the romantic and erotic advances of the handsome and principles young enemy captain, setting the stage for denial, then angst and eventually submission, with all of the requisite sighs, tears, and passionate protestations. Thankfully, Hannah is a better writer than this and does not fall into this trap.
Is Vianne attracted to this man? Yes. Does she act upon her thoughts? No. Is she cold and starving and beaten by the ravages of war? Is Captain Wolfgang Beck scared and conflicted and trying to carry out unjust orders in an unforgiving regime? Is Vianne desperate to secure food and heat for herself and her young daughter Sophie? Does Captain Beck hold Vianne’s fate in the palm of his hand? Absolutely, yet both she and he know full well the effects that bad choices might have on their tenuous truce and they purposely never act upon their desires. Attracted as they may be to one another physically, both are in love with their respective spouses, his back in Germany, hers at war on the Front. Both are terrified, lonely, and worn down, but because they are both decent people, they keep their own desires in check.
Vianne and her younger sister Isabelle lost their mother to illness not long before this war began, and until recently, Isabelle had been living with Vianne. When their father returned from World War I, he was a broken man, ravaged by the sights and experiences he had endured, powerless to express his love for his wife or two daughters. Because of this, both girls had been sent to live elsewhere when their mother succumbed to illness, and Vianne, only a young child herself, had been forced to be mother to not only herself but to her baby sister Isabelle as well due to their father’s inability to parent either. Isabelle had been placed in countless boarding schools in France in an attempt to bring stability to the troubled teen, but from each new facility she has been tossed as a result of her wild behavior and inability to reform. When bombs drop from the skies over Paris and much of France and caravans of trucks bring enemy soldiers closer and closer to their home, eighteen-year-old Isabelle struggles to find a purpose for her life. She yearns for her father’s love and direction, yet finds none. She hopes that her sister Vianne can love her as a mother should, yet Vianne is not her mother and has little time or patience for Isabelle’s antics or to address her failings or desires. When Isabelle finds herself estranged from both her father and older sister, she reaches out for love elsewhere, meeting Gaeten, a young Resistance operator who believes passionately that he and his countrymen can fight the Nazis from within France. Finally, Isabelle believes that she has found her raison d’etre, and she seeks her purpose through this endeavor.
While Isabelle remains a Resistance leader for the duration of the war, her operations are necessarily kept quiet. No one, other than a select few other Resistance fighters, can know of her occupation nor of her duplicity. Because of this, both Isabelle’s father and sister believe that Isabelle is lost to them, as they are all lost to one another. The father is unable to show his love to his daughters because of the stress he still experiences from his tour of duty in WWI and the loss of his wife when he returned. Vianne and her sister Isabelle are estranged from their father and from one another. Vianne tries to keep her daughter Sophie and herself alive during the hardships of famine and terror and to simply “go along to get along”, but when she loses her teaching job due to her association with her best friend who is Jewish, she quietly becomes a Resistor herself, secretly stowing away young Jewish children in an abbey nearby to keep them safe from the concentration camps. In fact, she adopts her friend’s son when the woman is taken away by the Gestapo one morning and raises him as her own child. Both sisters, and eventually we learn their father also, live duplicitous lives for many years in an attempt to save their children, their country and their belief in freedom.
Certainly, these characters are fictitious. Vianne and Isabelle and their father never lived, but their stories do. In 1940, The Nazis swept into Paris. At first, those living in the French countryside convinced themselves that the Nazis would be satisfied with occupying the capital, but they soon realized as bombings and caravans of trucks and trains began to arrive in their own towns and villages carrying in them German soldiers and later Gestapo forces that this was not to be. Germany was determined to occupy all of France, but the French government had fallen with little protest and begrudging acceptance of Nazi rule. France appeared doomed to become a part of the Third Reich and there was little that ordinary people could do to combat this reality.
But, of course, we know that this is untrue. It turns out that humans will put up with a lot to just stay alive. We will put up with hunger and threats and being cold. We will put up with enemy soldiers quartering in our own homes. We will put up with fear and constant worry and ration cards and bombings and sorrow and intimidation and death.
Shock and disbelief are the emotions most of those living in occupied France experienced in the first few weeks and months after the invasion. As time wore on, they began to respond to DeGaulle’s and British attempts to urge them to resist the occupation. Some resisted openly and loudly in the streets, but it soon became apparent that this method of resistance most often resulted in beatings, removal to a concentration camp, or even death. Within months, French Resistance had begun. Farmers, Catholic priests and nuns, business owners, teachers, shopkeepers, and students formed a loosely knit yet closely bound underground system of fighting the Germans while sustaining their personas of obliging residents under the new Vichy government put in place by the Nazis. Notes were passed, birth certificates and identity papers forged, Jews were hidden, and parachutists from Allied Forces shot down by German planes were housed and given safe passage to neutral countries. All of this was accomplished in an era when there was disrupted mail service, almost constant bombings, few phone lines, no cell phones and no Internet. The risk was real and, if caught engaging in any subversive activities, the punishment was swift and certain. Torture, confinement in a concentration camp, and, more often than not, death by starvation or rifle shot could be expected. For women the dangers were even more terrifying, as rape and removal of one’s children was a common response from the Nazis.
In 2020, this wartime saga seems so removed from our daily life. While Americans suffered unbearable consequences from our involvement in WWII and subsequent conflicts, never have we known the occupation by enemy forces over a sustained time. Except for the British invasion (and I do not mean that by the Beatles in 1964) prior to the Revolutionary War more than three hundred years ago and the bombing at Pearl Harbor, our soil has remained safe from foreign invasion. There have been threats and even attempts to topple our government, but, so far, we have prevailed. Despite our many political, social, and racial and ethnic differences, we have managed to remain one country under one government with borders intact.
